For an in-depth discussion of copyright, please refer to the Copyright section.
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its creator rights over use of the work that they have created. The rights granted allow the creator to control:
OERs are different; the UNESCO definition of OERs mentions "have been released under an open license". So, what is an open licence? Basically, it's an agreement that permits individuals to carry out, with no cost or charge, various actions with material that has been created by other people. These actions may be:
There is a perception that copyright is all or nothing - either you copyright your work, or you release it into the public domain. This isn't the case; with an open licence; the creator is able to fine-tune what rights are retained and what rights are ceded and so occupies a middle ground between the public domain and "all rights reserved" copyright.
The best known and most commonly used open licences are those of Creative Commons (CC). Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation and international network helping to promote and expand sharing of works. If copyright asserts "all rights reserved" then the use of a Creative Commons licence is used to assert "some right reserved", The idea being to allow sharing of some description while still affording copyright protection to the creators. There are different CC licences which waive or reserve different rights. Common to all CC licences is attribution; no matter what you are allowed to do with a creator's work, you must give them proper credit. All Creative Commons licenses require users of a work to properly credit the creator(s) of that work.
Users of CC-licenced content must:
There are a number of attributes that you can combine together to create a CC licence. These are:
By: This is common to all CC licences and indicates that the user of the work must give appropriate credit to the creator.
Share Alike (SA): Allows users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, but if you modify the content, you must licence your modified content under the same terms (users being free to modify your work).
No Derivatives (ND): Allows users to copy and distribute the work in unadapted form only - no modifications
No Commercial Use (NC): Allows users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, but if you modify the content, you must licence your modified content under the same terms (users being free to modify your work
These features can be combined to yield six different licences
CC-BY. The least restrictive licence. Users are free to copy distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use
CC-BY-NC. This licence allows users to copy, distribute and modify the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
CC-BY-ND. This licence allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in an unmodified form only and only so long as attribution is given to the creator
CC-BY-SA. This license allows users to copy, distribute and modify the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you modify the material, you must license it under identical terms.
CC-BY-NC-ND. This licence allows users to copy, distribute in any medium or format in unmodified form only, for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
CC-BY-NC-SA. This licence allows uses to copy, distribute and modify the work in any medium or format, for non-commercial purposes only and only so long as proper attribution is given to the creator. If you modify the work, you must license it under identical terms.
In addition, there is a separate licence CC0 or CC Zero, which can be used if creators want to give up copyright and release their works into the public domain (think of it as like a CC-BY licence but without the BY)
Open licences provide a range of options for creators to share their work but still maintain some control over how their work is used, but you still need to give some thought to how you want your work to be shared. Think about:
Also, it should go without saying, but before you can apply an open licence to a work, you must ensure that you are the copyright holder. You cannot apply an open licence to work that is not your own!
